Old War Stories
by Preacher
Summary: Torn, Jinx, and Sig have an evening of telling old war stories. Mild language and violence.


See end of work for disclaimer/description.

* * *

Old War Stories

A Jak and Daxter/Jak II/Jak 3 fanfiction by Preacher

"All right, here's how this round goes: ante's five chips, max raise is another five. Wastelander hold 'em is the name of the game."

The cards slid across the table into two pairs of rough hands as chips slid the other direction into an untidy pile.

"Sounds all right to me." Jinx muttered as he eyed his cards. His cigar chewed its way to the other side of his mouth.

"I agree." Sig rumbled.

"Jinx, you get to open." Torn said, flipping his own chips into the center.

"Yeah, right. I'm down to my last scrapings. I tell you, Torn, it's a wonder we still play with you. You're just too good at this." Jinx flicked his cards against the table.

"Sig?"

"I'm in the same boat as Jinx here. This game's just about over for the night."

"Fine. I'll cut you two a deal. No more chips, let's say we barter with something else."

Jinx let out a rough laugh.

"We're all old war veterans," Torn said. "Let's hear some war stories, eh?"

"Fair enough," Jinx replied. "If I should I lose."

Sig was less convinced. "I'll fold for this round. Maybe I'll come up with something."

A minute later and Jinx was lighting another cigar and propping his feet on the table, amidst cards and chips.

"All right, so what do you all want me to tell you?"

"How about how you got started on explosives." Torn offered.

"Ah, my occupation. I'll gladly share with you a tale about how I learned to love the bombs.

"My father, back in the days when Damas was still guiding Haven, and life was good, was in the fireworks business. And he was the best there ever was.

"I learned everything about working with explosives from a very young age, but for me then it was never a business of death, only of trying to deliver entertainment. I was a quick study: I knew the way they worked, how they were constructed, how to get them to go out with the biggest bang and brightest burst of colors. And boy, did I love my dad's job. Other kids had dads who were shopkeepers, or who served in the Royal Guard. But my dad...well, he topped them all as far as I was concerned.

"Come the festival of Mar, dad would be working almost around the clock. The royal orders for fireworks would come in, and be filled, but there would also be purchase orders from everyone, from all corners of the city. I can still remember the first time I walked into his workshop during the busiest time of the year, just the smell of it. I loved it. I wanted to be him just so badly.

"For days it was hard work: hot, dirty, usually pungent...but then it all paid off when you finally got to set the suckers off. To hear them light and fly and pop, and see the children looking up and the applause after a really spectacular one...it made every second of it worth it.

"I suppose it wasn't so much like growing up to be a demolitions man as it was growing up the child of an artist. That's really what dad was, an artist. He created works of art that were fleeting and priceless. And of course, you could never find finer fireworks. I looked forward to the day that it would become a real father-son business, and we would be the best team ever.

"Then things turned sour. Damas was kicked off the throne, the Baron installed himself, the city was constantly under assault. No more good times. It was tough keeping the business alive. Dad had to take up a shift working with more powerful, more dangerous explosives for use by the Baron's cronies. It was harder work, with none of the rewards of his true passion. He would come home late and tired, and seemed to have all the life sucked out of him.

"I suppose that's when I started hating the Baron.

"Eventually, there was an accident. I couldn't have been more than fourteen. The plant he was working at had an explosion. They were pretty common then, for one reason or another. The Baron just did a damn good job of covering them up. And suddenly, dad was gone. And I stood in his workshop and wondered what I would become.

"Then the resistance formed in its infancy, and I hung around with a bunch of people in it...heh, started smoking then, I guess. But I got a job with them, working with ammunition and explosives. Small stuff at first, just smoke bombs and teargas to keep the guard on their toes. Then the bigger stuff. Taking down doors...walls...bridges...pretty soon nothing was too big to take on. And that's where I've stood ever since.

"I'd like to go back to the fireworks business, really. Now that the war's over...it'd be real nice. Just taking up the family mantle. See if I could live up to my old man, you know? I think it would be nice to just send up a whole bunch of rockets, and kick back and enjoy along with everyone else."

Jinx closed his eyes and rolled the cigar back across his mouth. "I'm done. That's all from me this evening." He opened an eye and rolled it towards Sig. "What about you, big fellow?"

"Aw, hell. I ain't got nothin' worth sharing with you guys. Especially after that act. That's a tough one to follow."

"How about the story behind your bad eye? I don't think I've ever heard the one behind that." Jinx pressured.

Sig closed his good eye and leaned his head back.

"Well...it happened like this.

"I was already headed into my 'best years', I guess, about when Damas was deposed. I wanted to make a name for myself, and one of the ways kids did that back then was to head out and join up with Damas's ragtag bunch of exiles. There couldn't have been much more than fifty or sixty people following him then, men, women, and children. I managed to get myself kicked out of the city, almost intentionally, and I wound up joining his posse.

"Every story you've ever heard about the wasteland being brutal to those who dare try and live in it, well, it's true through and through. I damn near died before I ever saw another soul in the waste. But I was lucky, and was found. This was before the entire arena deal. If you were saved, you'd make it up to the bloke who saved you. Go figure, I was lucky enough to fall in under a guy called Bushman.

"I wasn't the only poor kid he'd saved, either. There was another young guy about my age, went by the name of Gouge, but everyone just called him Tubby. You all know him as Kleiver.

"Like I said, we were both under this Bushman guy, and he had us do all the dirty work. He was one of Damas's right hand men, and prided himself as one of the biggest game hunters that the wasteland had ever known. The man had a passion for guns, and for killin' metal heads. And Kleiver and I got to do all the skinning and cleaning and stuffing, lucky us.

"One day, we headed out with Bushman, and he had his eyes on bagging some prime pelts from a nest near the city. It was a smaller nest, but still full of nasties. We headed in, with Bushman in the lead with his big gun, and Kleiver next with most of the gear, then me in the rear with Bushman's other two rifles.

"We hadn't gotten more than two minutes walk into the nest before Bushman decided he found a prime target. Really unusual metal head, a long neck with a real pretty frill. Piece of work for something so sinister. He dropped to one knee, aimed, and took him out on the first shot. The trouble was where the damn fool had picked to stand to shoot. He was right next to a big sinkhole, and that sinkhole held one of the nastiest beasties I've ever seen. It was a flyer of some sort, I'll be damned if I've ever seen one like it since.

"This sucker comes out, spreads its wings- probably at least thirty feet, but it couldn't get them open all the way- reaches out and spears Bushman clean through with a foreleg. I'll spare you the details - I wouldn't wish that death on any man. Next in line, of course, is Kleiver, and you can imagine that a younger and chubbier Kleiver would look like prime dinner for a metal head. So the nasty beast is hovering over him, readying itself for the kill, and Kleiver doesn't have anything but a couple of skinning knives on him.

"I already had one gun in my hand, so I brought it up and decided that, live or die, this sucker was coming with us. My first shot went wide- I was probably shaking so bad- but it got his attention for a second. My second shot was dead on: square between his beady little eyes. That didn't really do much, you see, other than get him mad. I should have been shooting for the underbelly, where they're soft. Flyers are, at least.

"Well, this bad boy rears up- still on his legs, he never actually got up off the ground- and leans towards me. He opens wide, and I expect to hear it roar or shriek or something, and I decide I might as well try and plant a shot straight down his throat. Well, I'm sighting it, and about to fire, when he doesn't roar at all. He spits a spike at me, probably about as long as my hand. Hits me right in the eye, and I drop the gun, fall to the deck, and black out completely.

"I don't remember anything until I woke up three days later back at Spargus with a white hot pain in my head and no left eye."

"What happened after you were out?" Torn asked.

"Apparently Kleiver got his act together, grabbed the gun I'd dropped, and planted one where it counted: right on the belly. Then he had the task of dragging a very bloody young me back to the buggy, and then racing back to Spargus. It's a miracle I didn't die on the way, really. Kleiver and I have been on pretty good terms ever since."

"You didn't answer how you got the new eye, though." Jinx pointed out.

"This? This was from Krew. I'd already been living with no left eye for years, and I'd perfected my aim. This just helps me for everything a normal eye isn't good at. Night vision, keeping track of all the cards I see in poker games...doesn't help me much, though." Sig smiled with a gesture to his tiny pile of chips.

"Well, that's Sig and I. Now, while you are indeed the winner, Torn, I'd appreciate it if you'd cough up a story of your own."

"Hm." Torn coughed. "I've got a story. But it's not a happy one. About the reason I left the guard."

Jinx tried to blow a ring of smoke in the air but failed- he'd been working on it, still couldn't get it right. "Go ahead."

"I'd been in the guard for what...probably nearly two years by then. And I was used to it. You know how it is. After you get over arresting people and throwing them in jail for really minor stuff, then going on raids and pulling suspected resistance members from their houses in the dead of night...you just think it's normal.

"It stopped being normal for me after the Baron decided that his war was more important that the humanity at large. You all remember when he shut off the water. This was the summer before that. The resistance was starting to get moving by then, and the Guard was on full-time damage control.

"Somebody in the high brass came up with the idea of picking someone from the resistance and using them as the scapegoat for everything that the Baron did to the slums. Economic pressure, curfews and movement restrictions, denial of the use of the Baron's sewer system...the relentless Baron-controlled media pinned the blame on Damas's would be successor, Warden Quinn. Quinn was trying on one front to lead his people into battle against the oppressors, while at the same time trying to fight back against a wave of propaganda that was relentlessly biting at his heels.

"I was there when the Baron decided it was time to 'make an example' of Quinn once and for all. My squad was sent to the slums to round him up and bring him back for what we were told was banishment. When I saw my captain torch his house, I thought something was up.

"The next day, in front of the whole city, and broadcast on every single loudspeaker and video plate in the whole city, the Baron publicly rebuked Quinn for 'subversion', 'traitorous and heinous crimes', and 'causing fear and misery among the people'. I thought for certain that was it for Quinn, and he would be sent to the wasteland.

"I was just as shocked as anyone when the Baron ordered his death by firing squad.

"I was real lucky, too. Got a front row view of the whole thing, and I had nowhere to go. I nearly threw up inside my helmet from it all- I wasn't quite so hardened back then.

"That drove me to quit. To see just how terrible all this had become. He could have been banished, or thrown in jail to rot, but the Baron ignored all rules about executing a public leader and made a martyr of him. I knew that I didn't want to be on that side any more. I hadn't signed up for that sort of shit. And so I was out the next day and in the resistance within a week.

"Things changed and the resistance became what it was for the rest of the war. No more publicly known leader, guerilla tactics, insider information on when to strike and where...and it was long, hard, and bloody, but we won.

Torn paused.

"I think I'm done."

Sig rubbed his eye. "What time is it?"

Jinx bit down and drooped his cigar so he could see his watch. "A little past one."

Torn stood up. "I gotta go. If Ashelin finds out I've been up all night drinking and telling old war stories, I'll catch no end of it."

"Your secret's safe with us, buddy." Jinx winked.

"I'd best be off as well. You two take care, you hear?" Sig yelled as he strode out the door into the night.

Jinx leaned his head back against the wall and tried to blow another smoke ring. This time he got it. He smiled. More than he had bargained for this evening, but a good night for drinking and telling old war stories.

* * *

Disclaimer: The characters, places, and certain events described in this fanfiction, including Torn, Jinx, Sig, Baron Praxis, Damas, Spargus, Haven City, "metal heads", and other assorted facets of this piece are the property of Naughty Dog, Sony, and other respective property holders. Only the events that the characters describe save for references to actual in-game events are my own personal property. This piece should be seen as a tribute to an excellent game by a thoroughly entertained fan and customer, and nothing more.

Author's notes:

I began work on this fiction immediately after completing Jak 3. The Jak series was an enjoyable romp for a gamer such as myself, as I am a huge fan of the platform shooter genre.

I chose to focus on Torn, Jinx, and Sig because all three are the somewhat enigmatic badasses that lend color to the second two games. I found them to be birds of a feather, and the idea of them sitting around playing cards and telling old war stories seemed appealing enough to write a fic on. This practically wrote itself.

I imagine this took around four hours spread over three nights from 10: to 11: each evening. That for me is record time.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to entertain you. It is good to write again.

Preacher, on 1, 2005


End file.
